The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II - MCM Preview

I won’t deny it, I’ve never heard of the Legend of Heroes series before trying it at MCM. And after trying the game out, much to my hand’s dismay, walked away wondering if I should pick up a Vita with games like this potentially tipping my hand. The demo felt more like a hands on with what the game’s got, rather than showcasing the best parts. Luckily for me, I like jumping into the middle of a series blind and doing that here, I understood the situation/story quite well.

The out of combat traversal took some time understanding how to operate fully since the actual PS Vita was clamped in a way that it made controlling the joystick on the right hand side and the Start/Select buttons difficult to use. But these issues were relieved with the left button snapping the camera to the character’s perspective. A great feature considering you’ll be searching in some quite enclosed spaces. The text could’ve been bigger for my liking and maybe an auto-run button would’ve been nice. I could go on, but this feels like a well refined JRPG with all of the trimmings to make a great playing experience.

Combat is what I’m really interested in, especially with games in this genre, playing similar to the Hyperdimension Neptunia series but with a more standard turn based system. The characters have a set area to move around and can perform an action before the next person does the same. What hooked me in the hands-on experience at MCM was the Linking system, reminding me of the Fire Emblem series with the pairing system. By linking a character, you are able to execute follow up attacks to dish out more damage. It didn’t occur often when I played it, but it seems that by improving the character relations they happened more often.

Final Thoughts

Whilst I would love to talk/play more about this game, the fact it’s on a Vita kinda saddens me since it’s pretty much dead in the west. If it got brought to other systems that would be great, it’s a really solid game with graphics to match. Already released in the West, definitely give this series a go if you have a Vita already since the first one’s already released with the third installment having been announced already.